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→Principles
Lantern is for the Name-As-Truth. The Lantern is the platonic ideal, the unstainable and perfect Truth hidden in the meaning. Those are not the mere names used by humans and their mutable selves: those are the names and titles of deities, the transcendent tenets of their legend, be they awe-inspiring or terrible, alluring or gruesome. Such appellations are true and unchanging in any point of any History. The Cantharide can’t modify or replace them, for theyre written in the ink of the Glory, but it’s within her power to exalt them, or subvert them, ever so slightly. For beings involved in the occult, When poets or scholars sing praises, when journalists slander, there grows the seeds of the Cantharide.
Grail (or Knock) is for the Name-As-Call. In all esoteric traditions, the true name of a being is a way to bind it, to appeal to it, to access its secret nature and merge. The Name-as-Call is Ecstasy when shouted in pleasure: it is Addiction when obsessively repeated. When your lover calls to you in a muffled moan of pleasure (or a shrieking shrill of fear), when a witch spits it in a curse or whisper it in blessing, the weight of their claims on you is the Cantharide’s. ''The Fruitbat takes your desire and makes you forget it, by making you happy with what you have. The Dongolopticon takes your desire, becomes an even-better version of it, and makes you realize what you truly need. The Grim takes your desire and uses it to torture you, so that the pain makes you feel less guilty for your desire. The Cantharide takes your desire, and makes it so big and all-encompassing that you're not its subject anymore, just its spectator.''
== Worship ==